ESL Jobs Forum

[Guy Courchesne]

A topic of discussion came up recently on using songs in class. It seems to be fairly common place, though I prefer not to use them

A teacher in Mexico provided a useful link for those of you looking for some insight and resource help.

http://slangcity.com/songs/index.htm
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Life is a verb, not a noun - Now Bloggin' and Working Hard

[Scooby *Scott* Doo]

I use songs a lot in class. In particular, Jazz Chants, although I've heard some of my peers complaining lately that they're dated. I don't know about that, although I'm not aware of any new books out since the originals were produced by that great author Carolyn Graham

[Lee Hobbs]

[Lexicon]

I just noticed this thread...

I'm the only teacher at my school who uses songs in class. Most of the guys here think I'm a little nutty in that regard, but I get good results.

I use songs in different ways. For one, I use them for practice in listening and speaking. I also use it as a source for listening samples that are in different accents and styles.

Lat week I spent a couple of days teaching my students two Bob Marley songs -- Jammin and I shot the Sheriff. They had a good time with it. The reggae was fun. The accent was definitely something they had never heard. And, it introduced tons of vocabulary to them. Whenever we work with songs in class, I always print off the lyrics for them to follow along with. So for the Marley songs, first I had them practice following the lyrics while they heard the song, then we did a listen and repeat practice for the lyrics, then we sang it with the music. I spent a good chunk of the class answering questions about the song, talking about music, and teaching new vocab, then finished up with a couple more times singing the song.

I've also used songs for phonetic exercises. One week we were working with sounds that were difficult for native-spanish speakers. We ended up taking a few minuted each class to learn "You are my sunshine." By the end of the week they were all about singing it. I even heard some of them singing it to other students.

The other thing I do is use songs in the students' native language for translation exercises. I just take a popular song, print the lyrics, and then write them on the board. We translate each line as a class, and they really get into it. Every once and a while one of them translates close enough to the original that we can actually sing it in English.


Anyway, I thought it was interesting, and thought I'd kick up this thread again.

Andres

[Lee Hobbs]

Those are great ideas Lexicon.

Thanks for sharing them.

Lee Hobbs
http://www.english-blog.com
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Lee's blog is still available, however, here: www.english-blog.com

[thomasdown92]

I often use songs in my lessons to improve student engagement in classroom. I got the idea of using songs as a teaching tool when I attended a chemistry lecture in my school where teacher broke into song and dance while teaching periodic table.